But the overlap creates some interesting symmetry between the rapper and the Netflix series' protagonist, Sam (Logan Browning), an outspoken, biracial student at an Ivy League university who invokes the wrath of alt-right trolls in the comedy's second-season premiere (now streaming).

While West has been lauded by conservatives for his pro-Trump tweets, Sam continues to receive blowback from racist cyberbullies for her failed race-relations protest and radio show Dear White People, which she obsessively defends on Twitter.

"It's another example of some of these things we talk about in the writers’ room that we think we’re being satirical about, and there it is in the real world," says Simien, who created the series. "Not that we have an explicit Kanye West reference in the new season, but we certainly get into how people of color end up being a spokesperson (for their race) against their best interest."

Simien, who also wrote and directed the 2014 film on which the show is based, chats with USA TODAY about its topical new season.

Question: When the season picks up, there's still unrest at Winchester University after the campus protest and blackface party. Why bring racist Internet trolls into the mix this year?

Justin Simien: It's a new weapon, this idea of using outrage to rile people up across the ideological spectrum. (The series) got "backlash" on the Internet and I started to understand how these bots and trolls were being used to make a marginal community seem a lot louder and more powerful than they are. The more I looked into history and tried to figure out how we got here, the more I realized this is a common feature of (white) America, that idea of, "What are you guys complaining about? You're free." That's been used against black people literally since slavery was abolished. We wanted to explore that, and also, who are these voices behind (alt-right accounts) and how did they get there?

Sam (Logan Browning) wages war with one particular Twitter troll, @AltIvyW, who spews hatred about her biracial background.(Photo: EDDY CHEN/NETFLIX)

Q: To research, you dug around message boards and comments sections to see how white nationalists organized online. What did you find that surprised you most?

Simien: Well, I didn't realize that they made (online) flyers. Like, "Hey guys, Dear White People hits Netflix on such-and-such a date. Click here to flood this message board and click here to bug their IMDb page." They have this kind of group-planned celebration of taking down black properties, which made the news for Black Panther, but is so common. I’ve always wondered if this was an organized attack ever since we did the movie, but with the show, the vitriol was not only so specific, but so repetitive. It was clear it wasn’t coming from people who had seen the show at all or had any context.

What it led me to is, there’s a set of people who feel there’s really something at stake, so much so that they want to create a false narrative around it. That really played a lot into figuring out what Season 2 was going to be about, and how that affected the personal lives of some of the characters people have come to love. We found a way to thread all of that together in a really organic way, because the show is in many ways about a (radio) show called Dear White People as much as it is a show called Dear White People. So the reaction to us in the real world almost always has a really interesting parallel to what’s happening to Sam and her friends.

Q: In the season premiere, Sam discovers that a group of students formed a Dear Right People radio show, where they complain about prejudice for being "white, straight and normal." It reminded me of Charlottesville, and how more people have exposed themselves as openly racist since Donald Trump became president. Was that something you considered while writing?

Simien: Of course. That is the brilliance of racists who are calling themselves alt-right. They’ve adopted the language of activism and progressive movements to describe fictional oppression, and the idea that they have something to stand up against or protect, which has no statistical merit on its face. It really is a kind of Machiavellian, preying on the human condition: If anyone tells you you've been cheated out of something, you immediately want to know what that is.

It's just sad that we are so woefully misinformed as a country on a number of issues that we fall for it so easily. The idea of a white man believing that his being labeled a white man is the reason why all the things he doesn't like in his life are happening is so outrageous, and yet for so many people, so easy to believe. There is something happening here that really requires a lot of attention and nuanced conversations.

Q: What can you say about how this story line plays out for Sam as the season goes on? Does she eventually track down her main cyber bully, @AltIvyW?

Simien: Certainly, @AltIvyW’s takedown of Sam doesn’t stop with Sam, and there becomes a vested interest for several of the characters to figure out who it is. It’s about uncovering the truth, and what is happening and who this is — these questions that have gripped a lot of us in real life. "Who is this alt-right? Who are these people?" I don’t know who hasn’t asked that question, so @AltIvyW is a Winchester version of that thing every black person is going through right now.